Crohn’s is a condition that affects one in 800 people in the UK and causes chronic intestinal inflammation, leading to pain, bleeding and diarrhoea.

The team found that a bacterium called Mycobacterium paratuberculosis releases a molecule that prevents a type of white blood cell from killing E.coli bacteria found in the body. E.coli is known to be present within Crohn’s disease tissue in increased numbers.

Live Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) has been cultured from retail milk purchased from stores in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

This means that American consumers are being exposed to live bacteria that are known to cause Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Johne’s Disease) in a wide range of animals, including dairy and beef cattle, and is suspected of being a cause of human Crohn’s Disease.

I’d like to draw your attention to a major success in PARA’s drive to find a cure for Crohn’s Disease.

Since the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) hosted a workshop on possible infectious causes of Crohn’s Disease in 1998, attended by all of the PARA Board of Directors, including myself, PARA directors Cheryl Miller and Karen Meyer have worked tirelessly with both NIAID staff and with Crohn’s Disease researchers to obtain funding for those researchers who wish to investigate infectious causes of Crohn’s Disease.

The first spectacular success in this ongoing campaign to find a cure for Crohn’s Disease is the provision of US$1.8 million in funding for researchers who are investigating a infectious cause for Crohn’s Disease, with a strong emphasis on research into Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP).

The UK government today adopted a comprehensive strategy to prevent human exposure to the bacterium Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP). MAP is believed by a growing number of scientists to be a cause of Crohn’s Disease, a lifelong, debiliating and incurable bowel disease suffered mainly by the young.

The Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF), which advises the UK Government Food Standards Agency, today approved a comprehensive program of measures aimed at eliminating MAP from retail milk, as purchased by consumers. Previous research commissioned by the ACMSF showed that live MAP could be cultured from approximately 2% of retail milk on sale in the United Kingdom.

The strategy adopted by the ACMSF shows that the UK Government is taking the issue of MAP and Crohn’s Disease extremely seriously. As the ACMSF says in its strategy document: “…. the Agency has put to one side the question of whether or not there is a link between MAP and Crohn’s Disease. The Agency believes that precautionary action to reduce human exposure to MAP should start now and should not be dependent on waiting for the link to be proven.”

Steve Merkel is a member of the PARA board of directors. Steve decided to approach his Congressman, Dennis Kucinich, about MAP and Crohn’s Disease. Rep. Kucinich decided that this issue was far too important to ignore, and thus began PARA’s first initiatives on Capitol Hill.

If it wasn’t for Rep. Kucinich, it is quite possible that the NIAID would not have become involved, and thus the MAP/CD hypothesis would still have significant perception problems.

As promised a few months back, I’ve managed to digitize the the BBC TV programs about Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP), Crohn’s Disease and MAP contamination of milk and water. Apologies for the delay, there’s been quite a few technical hitches along the way. You can access them from

As some of you may be aware, there is a wealth of evidence which suggests that some cases, and possibly a majority of cases, of Crohn’s Disease are caused by infection with Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis.

To date, research in this field has been severely hampered by chronic lack of funding.

In order to address this funding shortfall, Paratuberculosis Awareness & Research Association (PARA) has assembled a proposal for the U.S. Government. The premise is simple: We want funding for research to develop better diagnostics and treatments for Crohn’s Disease!

A group of immunologists at UCLA who were investigating antibody responses in IBD (both Crohn’s and UC) focussed on the antibody known as “pANCA”, which is proposed to be of diagnostic use in IBD.

The investigators conducted a search for microbial antigens that pANCA binds to. The surprising result they found was that, in a percentage of Crohn’s patients, pANCA reacts strongly with a protein which is shared among several species of mycobacteria.

Pasteurised milk infected with dangerous bacteria is responsible for a “public health disaster”, a leading medical specialist warned last night.

John Hermon-Taylor, head of the surgical department at St George’s medical school in Tooting, south London, claimed that a bacterium believed to cause Crohn’s disease, the inflammatory bowel disorder, was not killed by pasteurisation.